You may wish to consider Real Alternative which some people (including myself) have found to be a less-frustrating alternative to Real Player. It doesn't do everything that Real Player does, but that might be enough for you.

Douglas[/quote]
Dear Lister,
Take a look at this post (and thread). If there is no setting inside the program, such as your RP, that deals with Windows start up behaviour, then if the program (or part of the program that runs at start up) is not mission critical, zap it with Autoruns, i.e. uncheck the box in the appropriate run entry. Autoruns will move it out of the key and save a “back up” if you would like to put the check back. At uninstall time, later when uninstalling the program, it can be good to put the check back (i.e. move the registry entry back to where it was) before running the uninstall program, so that it will be removed by the uninstaller.